California, a Slave State

by Jean Pfaelzer

The untold history of slavery and resistance in California, from the Spanish missions, indentured Native American ranch hands, Indian boarding schools, Black miners, kidnapped Chinese prostitutes, and convict laborers to victims of modern trafficking
 
“A searing survey of ‘250 years of human bondage’ in what is now the state of California. . . . Readers will be outraged.” —Publishers Weekly
 
California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russian otter hunters shipped Alaska Natives—the first slaves transported into California—and launched a Pacific slave triangle to China. Plantation slaves were marched across the plains for the Gold Rush. San Quentin Prison incubated California’s carceral state. Kidnapped Chinese girls were sold in caged brothels in early San Francisco. Indian boarding schools supplied new farms and hotels with unfree child workers.
 
By looking west to California, Jean Pfaelzer upends our understanding of slavery as a North-South struggle and reveals how the enslaved in California fought, fled, and resisted human bondage. In unyielding research and vivid interviews, Pfaelzer exposes how California gorged on slavery, an appetite that persists today in a global trade in human beings lured by promises of jobs but who instead are imprisoned in sweatshops and remote marijuana grows, or sold as nannies and sex workers.
 
Slavery shreds California’s utopian brand, rewrites our understanding of the West, and redefines America’s uneasy paths to freedom.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Audiobook, American History, United States, Indigenous

520 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 2023

Reviews

[Michael Howley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the most stunning thing about this book is how well-documented everything is. Piles and piles of first-hand accounts, ledgers, advertisements, court proceedings, all out in the open. There's really no excuse for anyone with even a cursory interest in the state or its history not to know the basic truths about the Spanish Missions, the Russian fur trade, the gold rush and land settlements, prison labor, or farm worket and sex trafficking. It's all there plain as day.

[Jennifer Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 43%

This reads like a randomized cut and paste of primary documents without any attempt to analyze, contextualize, or give a cohesive narrative to the experiences recounted. It read like trauma porn— which is not to discount the trauma that was very much experienced by the people in this book, but an indictment of the author who seems to think simply regurgitating other people’s trauma is enough to make a book. She couldn’t even be bothered to impose chronological order in a HISTORY, much less come up with a cohesive narrative.

And, the thing is, it’s not like she’s incapable of it because the chapter on Alaska and the Russians was very good, which is why this book gets two stars. All of the other stories in this book deserved to be treated with equal care and craft.

[Melania 🍒 · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75|5

[Shawn Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Invaluable history of the (ongoing) practices of slavery in the state of California. Truly eye opening and soul crushing

[Lemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book almost three months to finish because I had to keep putting it down. Like many I had always been proud to be Californian and though we had our dark spots in history we’ve always been ahead in progress.

Right?

This book turned my entire world upside down. I couldn’t stop gasping and getting angry. How could do much be hidden from us? This is a fantastic and necessary read about California’s past and present in slavery and how a great state, like all others, was built on the backs of slavery.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I audited a university course on the history of California a few years ago, CaSS provided a great deal of information which was new for me. This included the extent to which Native Americans tried to resist the slavery imposed on them by the Spanish missionaries in the 16th-18th centuries and subsequently by the Mexicans before statehood and the Americans during the Gold Rush of the 1850’s. Likewise for the extent to which enslaved African Americans who were brought to the State during the Gold Rush struggled to gain their freedom. I had never read about an Underground Railroad in California, for example. The chapter on the Chinese women enslaved as sex workers and the men held in debt peonage as agricultural and railroad workers was succinct yet informative . The one on Native American boarding schools in the late 19th/early 20th century was a concise presentation of information I had already gathered from other readings. Finally, the chapters on the use of prison labor for profit and modern day sex, garment, and agricultural workers as well as cultivators of cannabis were very elucidating.

Pfaelzer successfully accomplished this by using her skills as a historian. Thus, there are 170 pages of endnotes which provide the sources duly referenced throughout the narrative text. There is also a comprehensive 37 page Index for readers who might want to go back and review something about a particular individual or topic.

Unlike many scholars the author used a declarative, quite readable narrative prose. And she enhanced my engagement with timely quotations from such primary sources as journals, newspaper accounts, and/or oral histories collected by the New Deal Writers Project of the 1930’s. A large number of reproductions and photos helped me to visualize the people she wrote about.

If anything CaSS is a proverbial victim of its own accomplishments. More specifically, there are times when the descriptions provided are so thorough as to make the book slower going than I would have preferred. And some of the sociopolitical or historical context provided in the earlier parts of the book was repeated again later. IMHO, more careful editing could have made a very good book into a great one.

Pfaelzer made three points in the Epilogue. First, that some of the names buildings, schools, and other institutions named after slaveholders have been changed. Second, but that slavery is still sadly being practiced in modern day California. Third, that some efforts are being made to address it. Unfortunately, the commission established to compensate victims of forced sterilization has rejected over 75% of the applicants.

https://calmatters.org/justice/2024/1...

Additionally, the statewide task force established in 2021 to study the effects of slavery and systemic racism has barely scratched the surface in dealing with this admittedly complex set of issues. Ie, there is still a long way to go to both eradicate these practices and to compensate its victims.

[LeeAnn Heringer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book because out here in the west, we smirk and say "oh, we had nothing to do with that southern slavery thang", but that's not true. We really could go toe to toe with the worst plantation owner in the terrible things that people do when no one is looking. We were just more equal opportunity about being terrible to a wide range of people, not just blacks.

Bu the book felt more like a series of essays that got gathered together rather than a complete book. The author repeats herself frequently (which is a little unforgivable with a 700 page book, where is the editor?) and then throws in random single lines about individuals without integrating them into the story. (Yes, it's terrible that a prostitute was raped and killed in Marysville, but give me a little more of a hook to hang my grief on, to understand what was lost.) The story line is very disjointed. And it's a tough go because the author is focusing on rape and murder and the enormous cruelty, but is the for profit prison systems or the Indian schools or modern human trafficking that unique to California? My sense is that it was / is a wider problem.

An important topic, well researched, but this book was not a good read.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The country is facing an existential debate about facts, truth, and accountability. Commissions, hearings and criminal trials will rely on the voices of those who were deceived, those who resisted, those who witnessed. This history of the enslaved in California does not calculate a total sum of evil; hopefully it makes the invisible visible. The voices of the men and women held in human bondage have smuggled out shards of the evidence to be pieced together.

The distance between the voices in this book and my own is great. Yet together they ***insist that we recognize California as a dystopia that grew outside the national myth of progress.*** The voices of the enslaved insist that many of us are travelers, not owners of the land; they insist that for 250 years, the enslaved in California cried forth in bondage and demanded their freedom. That demand is, as ever hopeful.

As T'tc~tsa, a captive Indian girl who fled to freedom, explained, 'That's the reason I tell it. That's history.'"

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Used this book as part of my research paper for my class last year to support my topic on “African American from California during the Civil War era”. I was able to pull some information from the book to support my research. Aside of using information of this book, I like to read books that I buy. Throughout this book it was very interesting details that Jean had analyzed. California slavery from the 1800s to this day. The book seems to be mainly focus during the 1800s period, it is interesting to know the behind the scene of California slavery, even though that California is considered as free slave state during the time. Because of the diversity of population of people, it resulted a mix feeling on slavery issues in California. The book was able to context more on this and how slave owners were able to get away and finding loop holes. My Professor from Cal State Northridge referred me to this book to further my research. Than I forward the book my other professor who might be reading it. Thanks Jean for your book !

[Falon Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am long past viewing California through the rose-colored glasses of melting-pot diversity and moral superiority of childhood. But wow. This book laid out the history (and contemporary reality) of California’s history with devastating precision and narration. In many ways, the veneer makes it so much worse.

The last chapter focused heavily on Riverside, CA — right as we’re moving here. I can’t believe I never learned that history growing up. It’s definitely worth revisiting that chapter in particular.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 actually. This was a horrifyingly true book, well-documented and painstakingly researched. Not for the faint of heart. I gave it a 4.5 because there was a fair amount of repetition, which if eliminated, could have reduced the intimidating page count.

[Robyn Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

C+. Audiobook

[Cloewood · Rating 4 out of 5]

she got a little third wave at the end there but mostly I was with it

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening...untold history at its finest

[E Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa. It’s hard to feel good about people or history after this read. We sure like to put people in predicaments and then blame them. It’s also clear US history is written from an eastern perspective.